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Harvey Clarke Mansion future still controversial in Evanston

Evanston residents have been abuzz about the future of the Harley Clarke Mansion since last year, when the city announced a plan to convert the lakefront landmark into a privately held hotel.

That idea collapsed amid strong community opposition, and now Norah Diedrich would prefer that the focus shift from the building itself to its longtime occupants: the Evanston Art Center, of which she is executive director.

The center, which provides classes and camps, hosts events and exhibits, and works with local schools, has rented the Sheridan Road mansion for more than four decades for $1 a year.

On Monday, the arts organization received a reprieve from a plan to oust it from the mansion before its current lease ends in 2021. But the group must still vacate by early 2015, even though the city’s plan for the Harley Clarke is yet to be finalized.

“What’s the issue here? Is it just the building, or is it the organization and people in it too? It’s real estate, I understand that. But I guess it’s the bricks-and-mortar and not the people who work here, the teachers who teach here, the students who come here,” Diedrich said.

Evanston’s plan to repurpose the city-owned mansion has been known at least since spring 2012, when officials decided they couldn’t afford to bring the 1927 building up to code and sought redevelopment proposals. That effort led to the ill-fated proposal by a member of the billionaire Pritzker family to convert the mansion into a boutique hotel.

The city has since entered talks with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, which has expressed an interest in using the mansion for its coastal management offices.

Last week, an Evanston committee recommended that the city invoke a provision in the art center’s lease that would require the nonprofit to move out of the building within 240 days of notification, prematurely terminating an agreement that originally lasted until 2021.

That deadline would have come in October, coinciding with the center’s plans to mark its 85th anniversary.

At a City Council meeting Monday, Diedrich and a passionate parade of supporters urged the council to consider the center’s importance to the community and ensure the organization has adequate time to find a new home. An online petition supporting a later move-out date had garnered more than 2,500 signatures at the time of the meeting.

Council member agreed, in a 8-0 vote, to allow the arts center a few more months — until Jan. 31, 2015 — to move out of the mansion, rejecting a suggestion to allow the center to stay for two more years. Diedrich said she had hoped a two-year grace period would prevent the center from having to move twice, first into transitional space and then into a permanent new home.

While some officials and residents questioned the need to remove the art center without a firm replacement for the building, City Manager Wally Bobkiewicz said that finding a new occupant would be difficult without knowing when the mansion would be vacated.

Though no deal is finalized with the IDNR, the agency had hoped to start moving into the building as early as this fall but was receptive to a later date.

“Things do not always move on an ideal schedule, and this is close enough to what we were sort of anticipating. I think it gives us some time to do more work, more thinking about it and more outreach to the people of Evanston,” said Diane Tecic, the Coastal Management Program director for the IDNR.

Diedrich acknowledged the art center has been planning an eventual move for some time, in part because the center also can’t afford the $430,000 in renovations a city study said would be needed to bring the building up to code.

But having to vacate the mansion years earlier than anticipated could hurt the arts organization, she said.

Tecic said the IDNR is also assessing the building’s renovation needs.